


Valentine's valentines

by jessamoo



Category: Holby City
Genre: M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 08:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessamoo/pseuds/jessamoo
Summary: for the holby valentines gift exchange. Oliver has an unusual Valentine's day.





	Valentine's valentines

For Oliver lonlieness had a shape. It had a face. A voice. It carved a whole inside him he could recognise. First it looked like Penny, and then his parents, then Tara, and Zosia. Now as he walked down the hall to the locker room for his first day back, his grown out hair hiding a scar it looked like someone else. It looked like him. All the parts of himself he had lost, the parts that a bullet had shattered, along with his skull and his brain.

Matteo was in the locker room and didn't seem to hear him come in. He was standing straight backed, tall and immoving. But he was staring a valentines card stuck to his locker. As Oliver moved closer he saw the sonogram stuck inside. It should have been happy, but it wasn't. Oliver supposed Matteo's lonliness might take the shape of Nina's eyes, or his vanished son, or the blur of a sonogram picture.

"How is Nina liking St James'?" Oliver asked.

Matteo just shrugged. "She seems to be getting on well. They all love her, of course. But then again she isn't trying to shut them down." There was a bitter edge to his voice that Oliver didn't often hear. "It's what best for us. This was she's close enough that we can raise the baby together without the trauma of actually being married to one another."

Oliver nodded awkwardly. "Zosia isn't very close at all. Can't decide whether it helps or not." He slammed the locker door closed after putting his bag inside.

Matteo seemed to instantly switch back to the person he always was. Loud, everywhere all at once. Noise and colour. He threw his arms out. "This is supposed to be a celebration! Ollie Valentine is back where he belongs, ready to conquer the world once more."

"I don't know about the world. Getting up the stairs today was hard enough." He gave a laugh which didn't even convince him.

Matteo grabbed his shoulders and made Oliver face him. "Are you ready? You're sure you are ok? Let me see." He put his large hand on Oliver's cheek, trying to peer into his eyes. Oliver, surprised to feel heat colouring his cheeks, swatted him away. "I'm fine."

"Then repeat after me."

"No, listen, I appreciate what you're trying to do-"

"REPEAT after me. I am ready. I am strong, and I am the best doctor in the hospital after Mr Rossini."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "I am ready. I am strong, and I am the best doctor in the hospital after Mr Rossini."

Matteo just grinned. Though Oliver wouldn't admit it, it did sort of make him feel better.

"Now, a cardiac ward on Valentine's day. Perhaps we can fix a few hearts."

 

The day was a long one. Oliver forcing himself through with coffee and inhuman patience. He kept checking his phone to see if Zosia might text him, given it was their first valentine's apart. He knew he was in a different time zone, but the irrational jump of his heart whenever he heard a phone buzz didn't care about that.

He threw his folders down with a sigh, making Damon jump and glance up from his computer. "You alright?" He asked, watching Oliver rub at his eyes.

"When is it acceptable to have another break?"

"In about four hours?"

Oliver groaned into his hands until he felt a hand slap his shoulder. He looked up to see Matteo peering down at him.

"Oliver, if you need a break then no one will judge you on your first day back."

"Jac will."

Matteo shrugged, since this was a given. "Then you should at least have a drink with me after your shift."

"What? Be stuck at Albie's with all the couples? I don't think so."

Damon smiled and clapped, pointing at them. "I'll come too! It'll be a boys night! A bro valentines. A brolentine's? Does that work?"

"It won't be anything because it isn't happening. Thanks for the offer though." Oliver said to Matteo.

"What will you be doing instead? Crying to Adele songs, eating a ready meal?" Matteo walked backwards away from him, raising his eyebrows since he knew he was basically right. "Think about it Ollie."

He disappeared into the bustle of the ward and Oliver frowned after him. He didn't know what to make of the offer. Couldn't bring himself to deviate from his self inflicted exile. What would be the point?

"Think about what?"

Ollie swore and jumped as Jasmine appeared beside him, eating crisps nonchalantly.

"Ollie and Matteo are having a friends valentines night. Like you and Morven."

Oliver raised his eyebrows in question as Jasmine glared at Damon. "We didn't ask you to keep out the flat so we could have a friends valentines. We're just having a valentines."

Damon frowned and tilted his head. "What like...you and Morven...I'm your flatmate, how did I not know this?"

"Because you're an idiot. And you-" She pointed at Ollie. "Need to have your valentines with McHottie. And report back to me with details."

"It's...It's not a valentines."

"Think you better mention that to him when you go then." Jasmine laughed.

 

Oliver was resisting the urge to turn and run. His feet were itching with it. Without being in control he reached up and knocked on Matteo's door. Literally, what was he doing? Having a maybe friends maybe not bro valentines date with his boss. That bullet really did do a number on his brain.

Matteo flung open the door and ushered him inside with a wide smile before Ollie could think. The smell of food hit him. The kitchen area was a haphazard mess of pots, pans and all sorts of vegetables. There also what he hoped was tomato soup on the wall. It made him feel warm. Maybe it was the dim lighting, or the reds and browns that infused the open plan flat, but Oliver felt instantly safer. He had expected Matteo's home to be clean, neat, maybe entirely gray. What he found was somewhere comfortable, lovingly messy and unpretencious.

Matteo, for his part, was slightly over excited. He put a glass of red wine into Oliver's hand.

"I'm making pasta. Over there is where you can put your music on - I already queued that rubbish by The Saturdays that you like - and over there..." He moved quickly to the tv and smiled a 100 watt smile as he presented, with a flourish, a Call the midwife boxset.

Oliver laughed. "You didn't have to do all this."

Matteo shook his head. "It's valentines day. And I'm Italian, we take these things seriously. You know Italy is home to the city of love."

"Isn't that Paris?"

Matteo scoffed, offended. "Venice, and being called Valentine you should know this."

"Well, being called Valentine I usually try and avoid that sort of thing."

"What? Love?"

Oliver stared into his wine glass. "No, but now that you mention it, that's also something that never seems to work out."

"Perhaps you need to believe that it will." Matteo shrugged, placing a lid onto the pot on the stove.

"Do you? Believe it will work out?"

He found he needed the answer to be yes. If Matteo could lose a child, if he could move to another country and lose his wife, if he could do all that and still think there was a chance of something, a chance at a redeeming sort of love, a chance at happiness, then maybe it might make it true.

"Yes, I believe that. We do not know the shape of our future. All we can do is hope for a good one. It won't ever be what we imagined for ourselves, but if we don't try for it then why are we here? Why have we been spared, if others have not, if we do not grasp at love when we find it?"

Oliver doesn't know if Matteo is talking about Nico or about the people who died in the shooting. He thinks suddenly of his parents, their daughters death poisoning them forever. Tearing them apart instead of bringing them closer. He'd hated them for it, but now he saw he'd been doing the same thing. Becoming distant. Becoming different.

He let Matteo step closer to him. He feels a swooping in his stomach, a stuttering of his heart. Matteo's eyes look dark in the glowing lamplight. Dark as an enveloping night, wrapping him up like a blanket.

Maybe it's the wine. Maybe it's because it's valentines day. Maybe it's because his wife is in the ground, or on the otherside of the world with a new name that isn't his. But Oliver smiles up at Matteo, who looks nervous, which is quite endearing, since he usually never looked nervous.

"This isn't a friends valentines, is it?" Oliver asked quietly.

"It can be if you prefer." Matteo shrugged softly.

Oliver gripped his wineglass and shook his head.

Matteo put his hands on Oliver's cheeks. He was checking if he was ok, trying to read his eyes, the way he had that morning, only for wildly different reasons.

"In that case, happy valentines. Valentine."

When Matteo kisses him very gently he tastes like wine and his hair is soft, and his arms a strong. Oliver wants to fall into him. After everything, after losing over and over, after crawling and crying through his recovery for an unknown reason, because everyone else needed him to be alright, he feels as if finally he's calm. 

He doesn't know if it will all work out. Oliver was a skeptic at heart, a worrier. He doesn't know if love will up and walk out one day. 

But Matteo hums The Saturday's as he dishes up the food. They do the washing up together and it's nice. Oliver tries to talk him through Call the midwife characters and Matteo pretends to complain. And it makes Oliver want to hope. For the first time in a long time, he feels as if he can glimpse some love, something to hold onto. 

He clinks their wine glasses together. He has to do it quietly, as Matteo had put his on the coffee table and promptly fallen asleep against his shoulder.

Happy valentines, Valentine. He thinks to himself. And he really means it.


End file.
